Apple's
earnings did showcase some troublesome signs, though.
Particularly worrisome for Apple, its brand-new iPad. I twas forecast
to move 4.7 million units, but only moved 4.19 million units, a sign
of slowing sales. And sales of iPods came in a 9.05 million
units, falling short of the predicted 10 million units.

Its
prediction of $4.80 (USD) earnings per share for its quarter in
December also fell short of the bullish analyst consensus of
$5.04.

These results led to an unusual trading pattern in
Apple's stock after hours. Despite reporting what seems a
blowout quarter, these telltale signs of weakness sent Apple stock
approximately $21/share, approximately a 6.6 percent drop. This
drop returned the stock to beneath $300, a mark that the stock just
passed for the first time early this month.

Perhaps
such is the fate of an unusual company like Apple whose customers are
fiercely loyal, whose actions are over scrutinized, and who continues
to deliver plenty of surprises come earnings day.

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I note that the 14.1 million iPhone's, outselling RIM's Blackberries, show that Antennagate either had little of no impact or the iPhone without that set back would have been even more insanely popular. The total of 7 million plus iPads sold since the launch in the spring is easily bigger already than the total sales forecast for the whole of 2010 made by almost all commentators and pundits.

I can't wait for the Mac event on Wednesday. It's a good time to be an Apple fan.

quote: You seriously follow his blog, read all the resulting comments, take the time to register, log in and then complain about it?

No, I don't follow Jason Mick's blog, I make a point of ignoring his articles. And when it's an article about Apple, you can expect his disdain for all things Apple to come through along with his poor writing and incorrect information.

I started reading the article, realized about 2 paragraphs in that it had to be another lousy JM article, and stopped reading the article. I glanced at the comments and noticed the one I commented on. Didn't even bother to read the remaining comments.

quote: I think it is clear who the fool is...

Yes, that would be the person making assumptions about facts that aren't in evidence.

I know this is the story, but I still find this difficult to believe. I didn't read anything on it, but considering that I have only ever seen one person use one (a friend) other than Natalie Morales on "The Marriage Ref" I just find it hard to believe.

I know I live in the STL, MO metro area (affuent part BTW) and not Cupertino, but there are just as many tech heads around here as there are in Fullerton or Sacramento, CA. I see plenty of iPhones (read: people who might be intersted in MORE Apple products) but I can't say the same for the iPad.

I know this is just one man's point of view but the "fastest selling electronic device in history" story seems unbelievable to me. It makes it sound like just as many people who saw a James Cameron movie have iPads. I'm not trying to crap on your comment, but just wanted to toss that out there because I don't know if I'm in some sort of iPad twilight zone. I'll have a look into it and see what I might be missing.

Looking at the Apple results in more detail and particularly the information in the conference call it seems clear that the iPad sales are almost wholly constrained by supply rather than demand.

In the conference call Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer noted that they had increased iPad channel inventory by 500K to keep up with demand, but that there was still a 2-3 weeks waiting time for customers.

The CFO also noted that the iPhone was also constrained by supply for the whole quarter and could have sold more. Apple noted that 270,000 iOS devices were sold per day on average in the past 30 days, with peaks of 300,000.

Enterprise results were particularly interesting given Apple's focus on the consumer market with adoption of the iPhone in 60% to 80% of Fortune companies and 65% of Fortune 100 trying or deploying iPad.

Well, I still wonder who in their right mind would switch from a nice 20"-22" big screen and wide ergonomic keyboard to some microscopic device where you should learn to touch-type with a pin, use microscope to read its retina display and... run what instead of enterprise standard MS Office? I don't get it, Tony, please explain.

All in all, why would an enterprise go from one well managed platform to another given that the new platform is much much slower CPU speed wise and hence can't run any modern enterprise software, while costing approximately the same money? (I'd say typical office PC is about $600 these days which is exactly iPad and iPhone price range)

Looks like they gonna pay same money to get way worse hardware... for their typical office tasks. A contradiction, no?

quote: Well, I still wonder who in their right mind would switch from a nice 20"-22" big screen and wide ergonomic keyboard to some microscopic device where you should learn to touch-type with a pin, use microscope to read its retina display and... run what instead of enterprise standard MS Office? I don't get it, Tony, please explain.

I don't know - why don't you ask them.

Ask the Fortune 500 companies buying the iPads and iPhones. Maybe they are all being fooled by Apple marketing.

In the conference call today with leading financial analysts Steve Jobs had this to say:

quote: "We haven't pushed it (the iPad) real hard in business, and it's being grabbed out of our hands," Jobs said.

"We've got a tiger by the tail here, and this is a new model of computing which we've already got tens of millions of people trained on with the iPhone, and that lends itself to lots of different aspects of life, both personal and business," he said.

On the competition, Jobs said he isn't worried. "We're not done. We're working on a lot of things for the future." He added: "We're out to win this one."

That's not my experience. Our company has a consultant who bought an iPad right after they launched. He uses it as his only traveling laptop/tablet computer. Not to imply this is universal, but he certainly doesn't find it "useless".

quote: Well, I still wonder who in their right mind would switch from a nice 20"-22" big screen and wide ergonomic keyboard to some microscopic device where you should learn to touch-type with a pin, use microscope to read its retina display and... run what instead of enterprise standard MS Office? I don't get it, Tony, please explain.

Though i do agree with you, on a personal level. There are definetely some fields that it would be useful for.

quote: Well, I still wonder who in their right mind would switch from a nice 20"-22" big screen and wide ergonomic keyboard to some microscopic device where you should learn to touch-type with a pin, use microscope to read its retina display and... run what instead of enterprise standard MS Office? I don't get it, Tony, please explain.

The days of a typical seat of PC + MSoffice have been on the wane for some time. I work in IT in a relatively conservative industry and most of our current efforts are all focused on mobility, web apps, and network services. In fact the PC+office combo is classed as a 'legacy' seat.